


Acceptance

by Citron_Swiftvale



Series: Cinder's Rise [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Action/Adventure, Anal, Anal Fisting, Anal Sex, Asphyxiation, Choking, Cinder is dominant, Double Penetration, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Infiltration, Master/Servant, Master/Slave, Masturbation, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Sexual Assault, Pegging, Piss, Porn With Plot, Punishment, Redemption, Romance, Rough Sex, Slavery, Smut, Threesome - F/F/F, after the ending - Freeform, piss drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:41:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27672167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Citron_Swiftvale/pseuds/Citron_Swiftvale
Summary: Cinder must return to Evernight castle to face her past and save the future.
Relationships: Jaune Arc/Cinder Fall, Ruby Rose/Salem (RWBY)
Series: Cinder's Rise [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023457
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. Blake's request

Ruby Rose, lady protectress of all Remnant, had the topmost chambers in the high palace of Atlas all to herself. She was relieved that this was the case, because she would have died of embarrassment if anyone had heard her pathetic panting and squealing while she pleasured herself in her chambers.

Well, not really pleasured herself.

It started not long after she had made her deal with Salem at Evernight castle. The witch would take control of her right arm and slip it under her dress, coaxing her with a light and studied touch. By now, Salem seemed to know the body she shared with Ruby more than the young huntress ever had, drawing out Ruby’s cries with expert precision while she manipulated her most secret place, filling her head with visions of her most suppressed desires.

“Salem...” Ruby called out breathlessly, and her fingers (but not Ruby’s fingers, oh it was the strangest feeling) gave her clit a sharp twist that made her gasp.

 _Yes, my dear_. The witch’s voice echoed in her head, sultry, inviting. _Does it please you?_

“Oh Dust, yes,” said Ruby, cheeks burning as red as her usual cloak. Salem delivered a vision of Weiss Schnee’s head between her thighs as the white-haired huntress extended her long, pink tongue...

Ruby came, for the third time that night. And if other nights were to go by, Salem would make the woman she was twinned to climax many, many times more.

* * *

_“Do you think she can take it up to the elbow this time?”_

_“I don’t know if this little bitch has it in her. Well, Cinder? What do you say?”_

_Cinder couldn’t answer. Brunhild had wrapped a belt around her head so it bit into the sides of her mouth, forming an effective gag, and she could barely breathe with the other belt that was cinched tight around her neck. She tried hitting and spitting in defiance, but the two step-sisters had her held firm, Brunhild holding her ankles while Skye flexed her fingers inside Cinder’s guts. They had her upside-down, head awkwardly pressed against the floor while her body arced up above her, adding extreme discomfort to her current humiliation._

_“Give it a try, Skye. You know she loves it.”_

_Skye gave a horrible laugh. Her hair was wrapped in an intricate braid and she was still wearing a noblewoman’s dress, only she’d rolled up one of the sleeves and started ramming her arm up into Cinder’s grotesquely distended anus, forcing her fist deeper and deeper. She didn’t make it much further than her wrist before Cinder’s eyes rolled back._

No! _She screamed in her mind even as her body began convulsing and she let out a stream of piss that, because of the angle, splashed her directly in the face. This made both her step-sisters cackle in delight._

 _“You win this time, Skye,” said Brunhild Schnee. “I didn’t think she’d come_ that _quickly!”_

_Skye wrenched out her hand from its place inside Cinder with a squishing, plopping sound, got up, and for good measure stomped on Cinder’s stomach, making her cough through the belt as she tried to throw up. “I expected no less. You’ll be begging for us next time, huh?”_

I will not cry, _Cinder thought, but it was too late. The tears were already coming._

* * *

Cinder woke up biting her wrist in an effort to dampen her scream. She was hyperventilating, and it took a good minute to calm down. Fortunately, she’d stayed quiet enough not to wake Jaune even though he was wrapped all around her, her back cradled in his chest. She turned a bit and looked at him a long time with her good eye, drawing the sheets up around her midriff and chanting in her mind, _You’re safe now, you’re safe_.

Somehow, despite this apparent punishment, she’d carved out a little spot of happiness for herself, one place where she could feel calm. One person she could feel calm with.

She let herself settle into the reassuring presence of his arms again, wiggling until she was more firmly placed in his warmth. His breath stirred the hairs on the back of her neck.

Then Cinder cursed softly to herself. The previous night, she’d asked Jaune to gag her with a belt in the same way her step sisters had done. He must have become excited by it because he had _really_ gone to town on her butt, dumping load after load of his semen into her bowels, but the soreness she felt now between her face and her backside must have awakened this memory. She’d have to be more careful about these little re-enactments. She _wanted_ Jaune to treat her roughly. It helped displace the old, bad, memories with new ones. But this time, it had failed and she’d just reawakened her trauma.

There was no way she was going back to sleep, so she instead tried to melt into the deep rhythms of Jaune’s slumber.

* * *

Jaune hated Cinder Fall. He loved Cinder Fall. He couldn’t decide which statement was true, or if both were true at the same time. How to even think of her? Or deal with the way his body reacted any time he was around her?

This duality was reflected in how they treated each other in the bedroom. He doubted he would ever admit what they did to his family or his friends, not even with Yang constantly needling him about his sex life. Theirs was one of extremes, shows of tenderness giving way to intense cruelty, Cinder and Jaune returning the torments visited upon them by the other with increasing ferocity until both became too exhausted for more. Just last week, Cinder had forced him to open his mouth and drink her piss as she berated him, only for him to pinch her nose shut a few minutes later as he stuffed his cock down her windpipe, ignoring her gagging and her attempts to vomit as she struggled for air. 

This was not how he imagined any of his relationships would go. Yet always afterwards, she would kiss him and thank him, and he had never had a woman look at him the way she did in those moments since he’d last seen Pyrrha.

He often apologized to Pyrrha, in his times alone. Ruby had forced Cinder on him, but developing feelings for the former villainess was entirely on him. It felt like an affront to Pyrrha’s memory, one that drove his abuse of Cinder when they had sex, with Cinder’s active encouragement. Cinder Fall would often tell Jaune that she _wanted_ to be punished, and that she would submit to him utterly, but it didn’t feel like penance. Jaune was no fool. He could see that Cinder enjoyed it when he strangled her, kicked her, slapped her, but in those moments, he could not help but vent his frustrations and rage at Pyrrha being gone.

It was the aftermath that troubled him. The way Cinder seemed to show him real affection and kindness, and the way he could not help but return those feelings. 

“Are we hunting Grimm today?” Cinder asked at the breakfast table. She was quite proficient at making rice bowls with only one arm to work with. Jaune often found himself watching in fascination at how she still moved around the kitchen with a kind of slinky grace despite all that had happened to her. Her manner was mismatched with her current wardrobe, almost entirely made of hand-me-downs from his sisters. This morning, she wore a blue summer dress with one sleeve flowing freely on the side with her missing arm, such a contrast for a woman who once almost exclusively wore red.

“We’re taking a break today,” he said. “Besides, the Grimm attacks are down around here since you started joining me on expeditions. The people here feel safe. Er, and Blake messaged me on my scroll last night. She’s in Argus! She wants to go out to lunch today. If that’s okay with you.”

“I have no opinion on the Belladonnas,” said Cinder, though he thought he detected a little acidity there. “If you want to eat with her, I won’t stop you.”

“But you’ll be coming as well.”

“What? Jaune, that is _not_ a good idea.”

“She insisted on it. Blake wants to meet you. I would have told you earlier, only I just heard from her last night and when I got back you, um...” he didn’t finish– _you pulled me into bed right away_.

Cinder gave him a tight smile. “You know I’ll just put a damper on the conversation.”

“Not at all!” he said with a grin that managed to disarm her.

In truth many of his old friends were curious about what happened between him and Cinder, but no matter how much she softened around Jaune, her defences and cold manner returned if she ever met the other members of team RWBY or JNPR. Her acerbic responses and prickly manner made things deeply uncomfortable. Jaune couldn’t get upset at her for that; all his closest friends had been in that cell when Ruby had formally made Cinder Jaune’s slave. They had all claimed it was the right thing to do. It’s not that she hated them, she told him, only that they had seen her at her lowest point, and she wasn’t ready to face them.

As he ate, Jaune found Cinder had sat across from him. “Why does the Belladonna girl want me there?”

“She said she wants to meet you. I haven’t had a real talk with her since then, but she promised she would treat you with respect. And I really think she will. It’s Blake, after all.”

“Really?” Cinder cocked an eyebrow at him. He knew that look, whenever she thought he was being naive, but he kept up his carefree expression.

“Really. Besides, I can’t really leave you alone, can I?”

No, the one thing Jaune had learned about Cinder was that she couldn’t abide being alone.

* * *

_“Like father, like daughter,” said Brunhild, angling her white strap-on even deeper into Cinder’s pussy. Skye had an identical strap-on buried in Cinder’s rear, and Cinder was pressed between them, smothered by their sweaty, pale bodies. “His favourite thing was when mom would peg the shit out of him every night.”_

_“You’re–you’re lying!” Cinder croaked._

_Only she knew they weren’t. She had seen it, wandering the halls of the manor house when she was younger clutching a teddy bear to her chest, hearing the odd noises from the other room and peering through a crack in the door._

_Her father was face-down on the bed, a band of silk tied around his eyes, fabric stuffed into his mouth to muffle his gasps. Agatha Schnee was on her knees behind him wearing some kind of harness and moving her hips in a rolling motion, slamming into her husband with increasing vigor._

_Agatha looked up as the door pried a little wider and locked eyes with young Cinder. But she didn’t stop fucking Cinder’s father, and instead of embarrassment, a smile appeared on her cold, blue lips. She kept holding Cinder’s gaze even as she gripped Titus Fall’s cock and made him come._

_That was Cinder’s first indication that something was deeply wrong with her new family. Before and after the wedding they had spoiled her, showered her with affection, made her feel like they loved her. But it was just a show for her father. And when he passed away, the change was swift._

_Only a few minutes passed after the funeral before Agatha slapped her the first time. After that, Cinder’s situation only got worse and worse._

* * *

A van pulled up on the way to the cafe, blocking their path. Jaune and Cinder barely had any time to react before a pair of Faunus dragged them through the sliding doors, and they were ready to fight before they saw a cat Faunus was waiting for them inside. Blake’s getup was similar to what she’d worn after Beacon–meant for stealth and infiltration rather than a meeting with a friend.

“What is this? We were just going to meet you!” Jaune sputtered, shaking away from a chameleon Faunus who held him with an unusually strong grip.

“We’re having a change of venue,” said Blake, and then her usually serious expression lit up briefly with a small smile. “It’s good to see you again, Jaune. Cinder.” She gave a slight nod of her head towards the other, expression gone blank again.

 _A very warm welcome_ , thought Cinder, assessing the other Faunus assigned to her. He’d already let go. An older man, dark skin, and with prominent dog ears and tail. She recognized him from somewhere, but couldn’t place it.

“Is that Sun?” Jaune asked, and the driver briefly flashed a smile over his shoulder.

“Blake asked me for another favour, you know how it is.”

“So where are we going?”

“A secret location,” Blake said, flicking through her scroll, “away from any prying eyes or ears.”

“Will there be lunch?”

Cinder winced.

But Blake was prepared for that, and reached into a bag at her feet to toss them both sandwiches. “You know I wouldn’t do that to you, Jaune.”

“Sweet! There’s bacon!”

They drove to the outskirts of Argus, to abandoned tunnels from when the town was first established. Even Jaune said he thought all these tunnels had been caved in, but Cinder knew there were always hidden places like this. She used to exploit them all the time in her former role, and she would certainly have used them if she carried out operations here.

“Good, area’s clear,” said Blake, hauling another bag as they walked into a steel-lined chamber which now served as a makeshift base.

“Why all the deception?” asked Jaune. “Do you think we’re being followed?”

“I can’t rule it out.” Blake plopped herself down on an overturned barrel and indicated two lawn chairs for her guests. “It’s not the most amenable of accommodations, but please make yourself comfortable.”

Cinder kept casting wary glances around as she lowered herself into the chair, wondering if they meant to abscond with her, or maybe execute her. It would make far more sense than Blake suddenly wanting to invite her out for tea.

“Jaune, do you think Ruby has been acting...strange?” asked Blake.

Jaune gave an audible swallow.

“A silly question, I know. The Ruby Rose we met in Beacon Academy would never have done...this,” she pointedly glared at both Jaune and Cinder, and Cinder realized then that she’d unconsciously reached out to take Jaune’s hand in her own. “I played along with that scheme because Yang insisted on it, but it wasn’t right. We should _never_ have forced that on you. Even if...” she trailed off again, as if not sure how to complete her thought.

“Even if it looks like it worked out?” said Cinder, now clutching Jaune’s hand tighter in a show of defiance.

“Yes.” Blake took a moment to collect her thoughts, turning away from Cinder’s cold stare. “Ruby has not been the same person since she defeated Salem. Something happened in Evernight Castle. Something changed her. There are times when she’s just like she used to be, and others where, well, she’s whatever she is. Ruthless, allowing no dissent, building scheme on top of scheme. That’s not the Ruby I swore to follow. She’s become too much like the people we were fighting.”

“Something did change,” Jaune said in a low voice. “But she’s brought peace to Remnant. She’s led the restoration, all the rebuilding efforts. The Grimm are dwindling, the people are united, they love her as their leader.”

“We don’t need to _fight_ her to learn the truth. But she isn’t telling us something, Jaune. I need you to come with us to Evernight Castle so we can investigate.”

“Me?” Jaune asked, confused.

“Well, really, we need you, Cinder.”

Cinder’s heart stopped for a moment.

“You’re the one person left who knows that place,” Blake continued. “All the others who trucked with Salem are dead or gone. Ruby made sure to hunt them down and kill them if she could. And as for the ones who turned, no one even knows where Emerald and Mercury have gone off to this past year. That leaves you.”

“You want me...to go back...there?”

She could feel her breath starting to quicken at the very thought.

 _There_. Where it all began. Where it all ended. Evernight castle. Salem’s home. Cinder’s home, for a long while.

“No,” Cinder whispered, unable to stop herself from shuddering. “I can’t go back. It’s...I can’t.”

“Jaune, she has to stay by your side, right?” asked Blake after studying Cinder a moment. “If you go then she’ll follow?”

Cinder steadied her hand by gripping her thigh. Her voice grated, just on the edge of calm before descending into something else. “Is that how it is? Am I just an object? Just a _thing_ for you to manipulate? _Owned_ just like I’ve always been?” She directed her questions to no one in particular, her good eye widening with each bitter word while she stared at her lap and her fingers bit deeper and deeper into her flesh.

“She won’t go anywhere she doesn’t want to,” said Jaune. “Cinder?” He reached out his arms and drew her into a hug despite the way the Faunus around them recoiled.

Blake seemed barely able to contain her disgust at the sight, her usual stoic expression collapsed into the look of someone forced to eat Burus stomach soup.

“We need you. Remnant needs you. But if you aren’t ready, that’s okay too.” He spoke softly into Cinder’s ear.

Cinder felt herself calming down, just like in bed the previous night, his soft warmth washing over her. After a long moment of rocking together, she reluctantly disentangled herself.

“ _Dust_ Jaune,” Blake exclaimed. “I though Yang was joking when she told me about you two.”

Cinder ignored her. She weighed in her mind what it meant to return to Evernight, and her sense when she encountered Ruby that there was something deeply wrong with the huntress, something that reminded her of herself before Salem broke her. _Do I want another monster like that loose in the world? Another person acting the way I acted, doing the things I did?_ She had sobbed after Ruby violated her right in front of Jaune, but she had done the same thing to Emerald. It had felt like Ruby was playing deliberately on what she used to be.

After a long sigh, Cinder mussed her own hair and allowed herself to look up at her fazed audience.

“I’ll go,” she said.


	2. Evernight Castle

_Brunhild hardly had time to react when Skye fell forward, throat spraying blood from the long-bladed dagger Cinder held in her hand. Cinder hadn’t announced herself when she came into the garden where the sisters sat drinking tea, and they made no move to notice her until she stood behind Skye’s chair and the blade licked out from her sleeve in one quick slash. The knife with its pumpkin-vine motif hilt was a gift from her fairy godmother, who’d manifested in the night. A gift from Salem, along with the other things the white-skinned witch had taught her._

_As Skye thrashed and gurgled in the grass amidst the shards of her broken tea cup, Brunhild finally began to scream, only for Cinder to grab her throat._

_“Shh,” she said, wiping the cold flat of the dagger against Brunhild’s hair to smear away her sister’s blood. Brunhild could only give out a startled gasp and tears dripped from the corner of her eyes. “Please,” she rasped. “I’m sorry, I’m–” She didn’t finish, instead thrashing as Cinder concentrated on the warmth building in her fingers, just as Salem told her to do, and coaxed her semblance to life. The flesh on Brunhild’s neck began to sizzle and burn, and her mouth opened wide but only smoke emerged. When Cinder dropped her, her body flared alight. Then Cinder crouched over Skye, who still weakly tried to staunch the cut in her neck with her hands._

_“How long have I wanted to see you like this?” Cinder said, toying with her dagger. Then she made the blade glow red, and stabbed it into Skye’s heart._

_Agatha did not scream or struggle the way they had, even as Cinder dragged her by the hair out of her study so she could look upon the corpses of her daughters. The step-mother, at least, seemed to understand this was only what she deserved, even as the house she had usurped erupted in flames all around her._

_Cinder emerged a black shadow against the flickering glow as she made her way towards the forest. A tableau of dead guards and others lay scattered in her wake, and a bright grin shone on her face. As promised, Salem was waiting to meet her in a richly-decorated carriage drawn by Grimm._

* * *

Watching the Grimm lands approach from the viewport of the transport was already making Cinder feel queasy. The flight path didn’t help; the Faunus pilot had taken a roundabout route to avoid Atlesian patrols and other ships from the Alliance of Kingdoms since they _all_ reported back to Ruby Rose. It was an utmost priority to make sure their mission was not discovered, and Evernight was heavily guarded.

Eventually, they landed between two spurs of rock, their cloaking devices not advanced enough to push ahead. “We’ll go on foot,” Blake said, “just the three of us.”

Once again, Cinder felt ash and obsidian beneath her feet as she disembarked across the red-tinged, blasted landscape she had once sworn to abandon for good.

“Well, lead the way.” Blake made a small flourish with her sword.

“Just make sure you two losers can keep up,” Cinder replied.

“She’s like that sometimes,” Jaune said apologetically, and they made their way between the ridges towards the dark spires in the distance.

Grimm still gathered here, though their numbers had dwindled greatly in the last few years with no one to coax and create new monsters from the waiting pools. That left the original inhabitants to tear each other apart. Cinder knew the paths that avoided their favourite hunting grounds, and the trio had no need to fight even with Jaune’s less practiced abilities in stealth. The cat Faunus was at least skilled in that regard, better, Cinder had to admit, than she was.

Concentrating on those tasks, on slipping through the stones, kept her mind off her increasing heartbeat and the wet, sick feeling in her stomach the nearer they came to the mouth-like gate of Salem’s castle.

It was a ruin now, many of the towers collapsed, the fields of bones thinning with each new gust of wind. Still, it held a kind of stately dread. In her time there, she had felt how the castle seemed an extension of Salem’s will, shifting and groaning with the witch’s touch into whatever shape she deemed best. Its beating heart was gone now, but Cinder had no desire to awaken what potentially slumbered there.

She chose one of the hidden entrances at the castle’s base, a tunnel shielded from view by well-placed statues, and then they emerged in the arched hallways of its interior. The floors were covered with shards of stained glass and there was a fluted warbling as droughts passed through the vaulted architecture. Scraps of wall-hangings and carpets still remained, but no Grimm, Cinder realized. The place was truly abandoned.

“Doesn’t look like we’ll find much of anything here,” said Blake, disappointed, as they ascended another spiral staircase. “It’s completely cleaned out.”

“Perhaps not,” Cinder said as they came into the throne room. The last place she ever wanted to see again, the place where Salem took her powers away as Cinder grovelled on the floor in obeisance.

The throne was still there amidst all the ruins.

“This is where Ruby fought Salem,” Jaune said quietly. “Remember what she told us afterwards? About how Salem was waiting on her throne and said she’d been waiting for Ruby all that time...”

Cinder swallowed and made her way up to the stone chair. Far fewer eyes to watch her, now, but she could still feel the glares and sly whispers of the dead. She ascended the pedestal, and then brushed her hand along the side, feeling the symbols there. _Yes, the one secret I was able to keep from Salem. She didn’t know I’d figured it out_.

She shifted the reliefs, felt some give way, then stepped back as the back of the throne split down the centre and rumbled open, revealing another staircase.

“Salem modeled this place like the chambers where Ozma kept the relics,” she said hoarsely. “There were places in this castle she wanted no one else to go.”

They descended, the air further down hot and stuffy, undisturbed. This section had not been ransacked like the rest of the premises, and the stone chambers it led to still held signs of Salem’s passing: tables covered with scrolls and books, shelves filled with dead plants and jars of herbs and bubbling liquids. The black walls flickered back light from Jaune’s flashlight, casting monstrous shadows.

“I don’t think anyone has been here since Salem left,” Cinder said, and then her gaze was drawn towards a set of human-sized glass sarcophagi placed on either side of a pillar in the room’s centre. They were joined together by thick black hoses.

“What is this?” Blake asked.

“It looks like—like the aura transfer machine at Beacon,” said Jaune, his face drawn taut as he traced a circle around the contraption.

Cinder ran her hand along a nearby desk, and stopped at an open notebook covered in flowing script, ink sketches and arcane symbols. _Salem’s personal notes?_

“Soul transference,” she read out loud.

Their search revealed related paraphernalia and marginalia from a thousand years of Remnant’s history. Jaune filled the satchel he’d brought with him with anything that seemed relevant, while Blake snapped photos and video with her scroll. They only halted all their rifling when Blake found a box of moving, hazy images that showed a pale, withered Oscar strapped to one of the tables. “So, when Oscar disappeared, Salem took him here,” she said. “He never told us that. But I suppose Ozpin always was one for keeping things hidden from us.”

Cinder slammed the book she’d been flipping through shut and went to investigate Blake’s find. A whole stack of slides, each one carefully labeled with a date and conditions. She looked thoughtfully at the machine again, and then felt an intense headache as the truth dawned on her. “She was researching how Ozma’s reincarnation powers worked, how he jumped from body and got into other peoples’ heads.”

“But what did she do with that?” asked Jaune, yet it was obvious he already had an answer forming in his mind from the way his lips trembled. “Oh. Oh no. The Relic of Knowledge told us Salem couldn’t die, but somehow Ruby killed her...”

 _It’s brilliant, in a way_. “But she didn’t. Salem transferred her soul into Ruby’s, and hacked the head off a body that was no longer hers.”

“But that’s impossible! Ruby would never let herself be pushed into that, that thing.” Jaune’s breath had grown ragged.

“Not unwillingly. But Salem can be very persuasive.”

“You think Ruby and Salem are the same person now?” asked Blake.

“I think...she offered Ruby a way to end the war when it seemed there was no way out, when Ruby realized there really was no way to kill her. It wouldn’t have seemed a terrible deal at the time, would it? If she thought her goodness would be enough to counterbalance Salem and that by accepting, she could save countless lives.” Cinder barked out a bitter laugh. “That’s what Salem does, how she works. She manipulates you into thinking you’re doing good, or at least that there isn’t any other way out for you but to do evil.”

“Ruby sacrificed herself to end the war,” Jaune said, running a hand over his face.

“I can...I can see it.” Blake too, was showing signs of distress.

They all stared at the soul transference device, its glass surfaces sending back their distorted reflections, before a faint echo sounded from above. Footsteps and voices.

“Oh no...” Blake tossed the box of slides into Jaune’s satchel and started running for the stairs. Cinder shared the briefest glance with Jaune and they joined her with haste.

* * *

It was too late to seal the throne. Ruby would know what they’d found, though if they didn’t get caught, she wouldn’t know who found it. _But she has a star candidate_ , thought Jaune. Only one other thought bugged him as he and Blake followed Cinder down one of the twisting, ruined hallways from hiding spot to hiding spot–why hadn’t Salem destroyed that room? Why keep the evidence there? _Unless she meant for someone to find it_.

There was precious little time to ponder that. The trio had ducked under a walkway just in time for an Atlas patrol to pass overhead.

Only to suddenly hear the growl of an approaching Grimm. The patrol paused as well, orders passing between them.

Cinder tapped Jaune’s shoulder and pointed to an open culvert that was well-shielded from view by fallen masonry. They did a quick dash, slipping into the shadows and crawling along the thin trickle of water at the bottom of the outlet before emerging out of the mouth of a large gargoyle, still some distance from the ground.

“I guess we’re doing this,” said Blake, taking her partners by the shoulder and propelling them forward. Jaune bit back a yelp, knowing what came next as one after another of Blake’s shadow clones staggered their fall. Each one battered them, pushed them briefly up or to the side, and burst apart. It was still a rough landing, all of them rolling on the volcanic rock when they hit until they ended in a messy heap, but it wasn’t the splatter they’d surely end up as from a straight dive.

Just visible on the causeway leading to the castle’s gates were several transports. Jaune rubbed his arm briefly and managed to sit up, then quickly crawled over to Cinder, who by far had the most difficulty recovering because of her previous injuries. As he bent over her, he felt a drop of something wet land on the back of his neck.

It was all too familiar. He slowly turned around and saw the teeth and jaws of a Beowolf hanging just over the lip of the empty moat, saliva drooling off its fangs.

Blake was rolling over and shaking her head, he was weighed down by the satchel. By now Cinder’s eye had widened and then she gave a sneer; he exchanged glances with her and she nodded.

They’d gained a rapport fighting Grimm together already, getting to know each other’s movements outside the bedroom just as intimately as when they fucked. Jaune didn’t have to speak as he deployed his shield and Cinder sprung up to her feet, drawing her scimitar in one fluid motion. A quick dash and she kicked off of his shield, managing to execute a summersault that brought her right on top of the Beowolf’s head blade-first before it had a chance to react. She straddled its neck as she worked the sword further into its flesh, whispering in one of its ears as she pried open the bony plate.

“Hop on!” she called.

“What?” asked Blake, up and already preparing her own ribbon-bound blade.

“Just trust her.” Jaune grabbed Blake’s arm and hauled her up the side of the Grimm so they were on its back as it began to rear, twisting around to the tune of Cinder’s embedded sword before bolting at top speed away from Evernight castle.

“You can control it?” Blake yelled in disbelief.

“There’s no one else left other than Salem,” said Cinder, “who knows Grimm as well as I do. Now hold on tight.”

* * *

The Faunus fighters were only briefly surprised when the trio came riding back on a Grimm. Cinder leapt off first, leaving Blake and Jaune to dispatch the creature and once again take a hard landing on the ground when it dissolved into black smoke.

Fortunately for them, no patrols had zeroed in on a galloping Beowolf, and Jaune trusted Cinder’s judgement that no one would pay attention to a lone Grimm’s movements through lands that were filled with them.

They’re only choice after that was to bide their time in the cloaked transport for an opportune moment to safely fly out across the sea again.

“What are we going to do?” Jaune wondered. “Do we just...tell everyone, like we told them about Salem in the first place? But this feels different, somehow.”

“She could deny it. And people would believe her,” Blake replied, rubbing her temples. “ _I_ would have believed her if I didn’t see it myself. There’s still enough Ruby Rose left that she has others convinced she’s just going through some phase.”

“But it’s only a matter of time before she finds out someone discovered that secret room,” Jaune said, the calm that carried him through their adventure giving way to panic and anxiety. 

“Do you really want to take this further?”

They both turned to Cinder.

“You were right, what you said earlier. No matter what she’s done to _me_ , she’s done a lot of good for this world. For how long that will last, I don’t know. And she was your friend. Part of her still is, I’m sure.”

Blake looked incensed. “You’re telling us to let Salem _go free_? That all of that was for _nothing_?”

Cinder shook her head and spoke quietly. “No. I mean this is something you need to _consider_ , because you’re going to have to confront her closest circle with the truth some day, and you have to be ready for how Ruby will react, how _they_ will react. I don’t feel you are the only person who thinks something is wrong, but the others have all explained it away. In the end, you will need to turn them and be prepared to fight Salem again knowing there might be no way to win.

“I turned against Salem. I thought it was over too, when I heard she had died. Part of me didn’t believe it. Part of me was right. I’ll need to go through that, all over again.”

“ _We’ll_ need to go through that,” said Jaune, clasping her hand in his. He could feel how she trembled, and also how she grew calm. He didn’t expect her to suddenly kiss him–long and deeply.

“Ms. Belladonna,” said Cinder as Jaune gasped for breath, “I don’t suppose you could procure something for me?”

* * *

Cinder doubted they would be back in the house in Argus for a while; their room in the safehouse Sun had taken them to was not the most accommodating and Cinder found herself longing for the little house with the garden. But, she reflected, this was something she just _had_ to do as soon as possible.

“Are you ready?” she asked Jaune, watching his bare back as his breath rose and fell.

“I’m not sure if I’ll ever be,” he said nervously.

Cinder laughed, unable to shed the edge of cruelty she so naturally added to the sound. “You owe me after that little escapade.”

 _I can see why Agatha liked this_ , she thought, running her hand along the prone and vulnerable body beneath her. He was face-down on the bed, and her fingers left a streak of cold lube on warm flesh. She’d blindfolded Jaune, but hadn’t gagged him–she wanted to hear every mewl and grunt of pain that came from his lips.

She rubbed her strap-on dildo between Jaune’s butt cheeks. “Don’t worry. You’ll get to do what you want with me after this. But for now–it’s my time,” she whispered, and pushed her hips forward.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am convinced that had Pyrrha lived, she definitely would have pegged Jaune.


End file.
